PICKET: (AUDIO) Gingrich defends '95 shutdown but advises Boehner not to be as aggressive

Former Speaker of the House and now Republican Presidential candidate Newt Gingrich joined WMAL’s Big Show on Saturday afternoon and spoke with hosts Derek Hunter of Big Government, Brian Darling of the Heritage Foundation, and myself about running for President, the debt ceiling vote, and the 1995 government shutdown.

Newt Gingrich gives his thoughts on the current debt ceiling debate on Capitol Hill- Listen here

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We actually did the right thing in 1995 in standing by our beliefs and be willing if necessary to close the government and the reason I know that’s true is that no Republican House majority had been re-elected since 1928 and we became the first re-elected House majority in 68 years. Now, I’ve always been amazed at these liberal reporters and even some of the, frankly, conservative establishment types who said, ‘Oh this was a big mistake. They should have never have done that. I think if we had sold out in December of 1995, we would have never have been re-elected in ‘96.

So let me apply this to Boehner. What Boehner should say is, ‘We’re going to pass a debt ceiling that has a dollar spending cut for every dollar that the ceiling goes up. And we’re going to pass it in the House and then we’re going to go on and do other things. I mean I think they ought to have, frankly, hearings all over the country with the social security sub-committee in which only people under 30 are allowed to testify. I think there are many things they could be doing that aren’t the debt ceiling. The Congress doesn’t have to focus on one thing. It can do anything.

Newt Gingrich talks about why he is running for president now - Listen here

Calista and I talked about this at great length and we talked with our daughters and our grandchildren and our son-in-laws for really over a year because we knew this would be a brutal experience, because we knew at some point that the elite media would come after us in a vicious way and so we really had to think through, ‘why do you want to go through this?’ And I always concluded that the scale of change of change we need is great if we’re going to survive. That it’s far more than just beating Obama. You have to beat Obama, but that just begins the process. We need to pick up at least twelve U.S.

Senate seats and pick up at least thirty to forty U.S. House seats. We need a contract with America next September. We need a clear explicit campaign based on values and ideology and principles. And we need to understand Margaret Thatcher’s rule. First, you win the argument. Then you win the vote. And we need to commit ourselves to a 90 to a 120 day period in 2013 that ends the New Deal majority…ends the New Deal governing system and fundamentally replaces it with a very dramatically different system.

Newt Gingrich talks about why it was wrong to use military pay during budget negotiations and what he would do to take it off the table permanently. - Listen here

I think that last time that was disgraceful. Look. I’m an Army brat. I know what it means to military families. We have three wars underway because of this president’s stunning inability to manage our foreign policy. I think what the Republicans in the House ought to do is pass something which takes not just the military but the intelligence community, State Department people serving overseas, the border patrol, the FBI…there’s a whole block of public safety and national defense people. They ought to pass that and say these are the first people who get paid no matter what happens. Then send it to the Senate and then urge every military family in America to call their Democratic Senator and demand that they pass it.

Newt Gingrich discusses why he believes Speaker Boehner should not be as tactically aggressive during the current debate over the debt ceiling and the budget as Speaker Gingrich was in 1995 when government shutdown happened. - Listen here

Well, first of all he should not be as aggressive as I was. If you look back, I was tactically too aggressive, but what he should say is: ‘I would really like to help raise the debt ceiling and if the president will do his half, we’ll raise the debt ceiling. Now, Mr. President, show us the spending cuts which will allow us to raise the debt ceiling, but don’t tell us this is a national crisis and you have no plans? You have no savings? There’s nothing you can bring to the table?

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About the Author

Kerry Picket, a former Opinion Blogger/Editor of The Watercooler, was associate producer for the Media Research Center, a content producer for Robin Quivers of “The Howard Stern Show” on Sirius satellite radio and a production assistant and copy writer at MTV.

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